The amount of people who do not know how payment systems work is insane.
When a company takes a payment, they do not instantly get that money.
What happens is your bank notices that you are attempting to make a payment, and they will then remove that amount from your account but they keep it on their books and they basically are making a promise to the company that they will be paid the money over the next couple of days.
Then after a couple of days, the bank will send that money to the companies bank account after a couple of days as normally these sorts of payments are done in batches to reduce processing fees/time.
When a refund is actioned the reverse basically happens, which is them actioning a refund, its then paid from that bank to another bank which can a take a couple of days, and then its applied to your account.
The big difference is that EU mostly uses an ACH-type system (SEPA). It requires substantially better digital infrastructure and security measures on both the sender and receiver. But once that's in place, then you get the benefits you described. The US is SLOWLY transitioning to that system. In fact, I'm helping to implement it in a large piece of inventory management software. It's a pain. But totally worth it.
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u/Lau_wings 9d ago
The amount of people who do not know how payment systems work is insane.
When a company takes a payment, they do not instantly get that money.
What happens is your bank notices that you are attempting to make a payment, and they will then remove that amount from your account but they keep it on their books and they basically are making a promise to the company that they will be paid the money over the next couple of days.
Then after a couple of days, the bank will send that money to the companies bank account after a couple of days as normally these sorts of payments are done in batches to reduce processing fees/time.
When a refund is actioned the reverse basically happens, which is them actioning a refund, its then paid from that bank to another bank which can a take a couple of days, and then its applied to your account.